3 Comments

I believe that utilitarianism is morally bankrupt because it doesn't distinguish between good people and bad people. The goal of a well-designed system should be to maximize happiness for good people but ALSO to maximize suffering for bad people. This incentivizes people to be good. When you treat the suffering of good people as equivalent to the suffering of bad people, you're creating really terrible incentives.

https://questioner.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-vs-consequentialism

Expand full comment

While I have not read your post, utilitarianism does consider incentives. In addition, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism and can distinguish between bad and good people. The only clause I disagree with you on is that suffering ought to be maximized for bad people.

Expand full comment

I found the blog through the post about normative decision theory. What a disappointment to see defending utilitarianism

Expand full comment